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Donald Trump’s love of brutal leaders shows that he’s a wannabe dictator

Donald Trump dictator

ALERT: During the current national emergency crisis, move quickly and orderly to your golf course for safety. Stay there until you see the big beautiful wall constructed on our southern border or until Democratic Congressional leadership yells “Uncle,” whichever comes first.

As Trump declares his contrived emergency crisis on the southern border, there’s an actual emergency crisis of gun violence usually notcaused by undocumented immigrants has continued, most recently in Aurora, Illinois, killing and terrorizing our friends and neighbors.

In 2018 alone, reports show 323 mass shootings, nearly one for every day. In the first six weeks of 2019, there were 39 mass shootings, killing civilians and six police officers.

In his role as Performance-Artist-In-Chief, Donald Trump manipulates the Constitution as a Rubik’s Cube that he turns and twists to his authoritarian dictator-wannabe needs and desires.

While announcing his national emergency declaration in a rambling and unhinged press conference in the White House rose garden, the President expressed his admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s approach to drug crimes.

He related a discussion he had with Xi where Trump said to the Chinese dictator, “You have 1.4 billion people. What do you mean you have no drug problem? Why?”

Trump then fabricated an impression of Xi saying, “Death penalty. We give death penalty to people who sell drugs. End of problem.”

“What do we do?,” Trump then inquired at the press conference. “We set up blue-ribbon committees, lovely men and women, they sit around a table, eat, they dine, and they waste a lot of time. Their criminal list, a drug dealer gets a thing called the death penalty. Our criminal list, a drug dealer gets a thing called ‘How about a fine.'”

Trump then stated that Xi added fentanyl to his country’s “criminal list” thanks to Trump’s ongoing trade negotiations. “[The] penalty is death. That’s frankly one of the things I’m most excited about in our trade deal,” Trump said.

Related: Here are the 92 times the Trump administration has attacked the LGBTQ community (so far)

Donald Trump believes he can run the United States government like he runs his numerous bankrupted businesses: without close oversight and constraints. If he actually read and understood our Constitution, he might comprehend the concept and reality of the balance of powers whereby the three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—are intended as co-equal in operation.

No such system exists in mainland China or in other dictatorial regimes that Trump admires and wishes to emulate.

President Xi Jinping, who took power five years ago and intends to stay in power until at least 2022, oversees a government that has enacted numerous policies and actions that would be judged as crimes if undertaken by a U.S. President or by anyone in the executive branch.

China severely restricts and censors online communications, while transmitting continual pro-government propaganda and educational efforts, the likes of which not even the right-wing media outlet, Fox News, can replicate.

Human rights advocates in China are often arrested and undergo show trials on state TV and social media, broadcasting their forced confessions to inhibit others from challenging state power.

Chinese victims of police detentions often suffer brutal torture and are denied access to lawyers, being held for months without the right to communicate with anyone on the outside. For example, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo was held primarily incommunicado for nearly nine years of his 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion,” until his 2017 death for exposing government-sponsored tyranny against peaceful supporters of democratic reforms.

China has no Bill of Rights in their ruling documents. In occupied Tibet, for example, Chinese authorities strictly suppress religious freedom, speech, movement and assembly. In 2016, Chinese authorities conduced a mass expulsion of monastics (monks and nuns) and destroyed many of their living quarters.

Last year, China extended its 2005 Regulations on Religious Affairs policies to “curb extremism” and “resist infiltration.” Their policies include the exclusion of unsanctioned teaching about religion and refusing to let teachers go abroad to participate in training or meetings.

In terms of gender policies, according to a report by World Economic Forum, China ranked 100th out of 144 countries for gender parity in 2017, falling for the ninth consecutive year since 2008, when it ranked 57th.

The Chinese Party Congress is striking in its lack of women in top political positions. Women and girls in China continue to suffer sexual abuse and harassment, employment discrimination and domestic violence. In addition, the government remains hostile to women’s rights activism by closing some women’s media sources and harassing women who campaign to raise awareness about sexual assault.

Although China ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008, people with disabilities still suffer discrimination in education and employment.

Similarly, while China de-criminalized homosexuality in 1997, no laws are on the books protecting people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Also, same-sex partnerships there not legal.

When looking at China’s authoritarian powers, it becomes evidently clear why Donald Trump admires Xi Jinping and other strongmen across the globe.

Trump also venerates his puppet-master Russian President Vladimir Putin, who signed the “Anti-Homosexual Propaganda Law” outlawing “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors after the Russian Parliament passed it in 2013.

Among its provisions, the law forbids LGBTQ Pride marches, positive media depictions of same-sex relationships, public displays of same-sex affection, and discussions of LGBTQ issues in schools. The law carries a fine of up to 5,000 rubles ($156) for individuals and up to 1 million rubles ($31,000) for media outlets.

Trump might also venerate authorities in the Republic of Chechnya where they’ve constructed detention camps to incarcerate men accused of being gay. In these camps, men are beaten and tortured with electric shocks. Some of the men have died from their injuries.

Does Trump venerate his Saudi friends for their continued restrictions on full equality and rights for women and girls, and for dictatorial regimes throughout the world that outlaw women’s reproductive freedoms?

As others of his authoritarian ilk, Trump attacks and abuses the press and the reporters who serve as a forth branch in our balancing of powers.

Yes, Donald Trump’s wall is immoral and inspired by a racist craving to hold onto his 30 to 40 percent of the electorate. And like other authoritarians, this president distorts and ignores facts and the truth while making up his own “facts” along the way.

The U.S. constitutional framers ratified an equitable structure for each branch to balance the others. It was proposed by James Madison–and has come to be called the “Madisonian Model”—as a way to obstruct the imposition of domination and potential tyranny by the majority or minority.

Maybe Trump should move to Russia, China, or the Philippians and run for elective office there where he can act out his authoritarian compulsions without restraint.

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